A Lebanese-born man with Hezbollah members in his phone contacts, Hezbollah commanders in his family, and a search history full of “largest gathering of Israelis in Michigan” rammed a truck packed with gasoline and fireworks into the biggest Jewish temple in Michigan while 140 children were inside. The FBI just needed a casual 18 days to determine this was, in fact, Hezbollah-inspired terrorism.
Crack detective work, folks. Somebody get these guys a raise.
Ayman Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized citizen from Lebanon who worked at a restaurant in Dearborn Heights, recorded himself before the March 12 attack saying — and I’m quoting the FBI’s own transcript here — “God willing, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can.” He created a Facebook album called “vengeance” filled with photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader. He told his sister he had “booby-trapped the car” and would “start shooting at them.”
But sure, let’s take two and a half weeks to slap the T-word on it. Wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions.
The details of what Ghazali planned are stomach-turning. Three days before the attack, he bought an AR-style rifle, 10 magazines, and 300 rounds of ammunition. He ordered 40 five-gallon water containers online, filled them with gasoline across four separate trips to gas stations so nobody would notice, and loaded his Ford F-150 with over $2,200 worth of commercial-grade fireworks. His final Google search before driving into Temple Israel? “What time is lunch at Temple Israel?”
He wanted to hit that building when the maximum number of children would be in the hallways.
The only reason we’re not talking about the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 is because Temple Israel’s security team did their jobs. A security guard — struck by the truck and injured — and his colleagues exchanged gunfire with Ghazali until the terrorist shot and killed himself inside the burning vehicle. One hundred and forty kids survived. Sixty-three law enforcement officers got hauled to the hospital for smoke inhalation. And we owe every single one of those security officers and first responders a debt we can never repay.
Now let’s talk about the part that should make your blood boil.
Ghazali entered the United States in 2011 on an immigrant visa. He applied for citizenship in 2015 and Barack Obama’s government handed him a shiny new American passport in February 2016. In 2019, Customs and Border Protection flagged him because — wait for it — his phone contacts included individuals “known or suspected to be Hezbollah members.”
And then absolutely nothing happened. No FBI investigation. No follow-up. Nothing.
His two brothers back in Lebanon were members of Hezbollah’s rocket unit. One of them, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was a Hezbollah commander who managed weapons operations and helped launch hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians. The Israeli military killed them in a drone strike on March 5 — one week before Ayman drove his rolling bomb into a synagogue full of kindergartners to avenge their deaths.
U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon compared the attack to the 1983 Hezbollah truck bombing that killed 241 Marines in Beirut. “That is exactly what this terrorist did a few weeks ago in our backyard,” Gorgon said. He added that if Ghazali had survived, his office would have charged him with providing material support to Hezbollah.
So we let a guy with direct family ties to Hezbollah commanders waltz through our immigration system, flag him once, forget about him, and then act shocked — *shocked* — when he does exactly what Hezbollah has been doing for 40 years.
This is what decades of Democrat immigration policy built. Open the doors, hand out the citizenship papers, pretend vetting is happening, and then hold a very somber press conference when Americans die. Obama let him in. The bureaucracy waved him through. And 140 children nearly paid the price.
DNI Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate that Ghazali “had familial ties to a Hezbollah leader.” The Israeli Defense Forces had public intelligence on his brother’s Hezbollah role. This information existed. Our government either didn’t connect the dots or didn’t care enough to try.
Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) praised the security response and said “if they had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here today, with children gone.” She’s right about that. What she conveniently left out is any mention of how a flagged Hezbollah associate sailed through an immigration system that Democrats have spent decades making as permissive as possible.
The children at Temple Israel survived because of brave men with guns. They were in danger in the first place because our government decided that screening immigrants for ties to designated terrorist organizations was just too much paperwork.
Maybe the FBI should spend less time investigating parents at school board meetings and more time checking in on the guys with Hezbollah speed-dial. Just a thought.
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